ROBERT BROWNING stands, in respect to his origin and his career,in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramashis "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bankclerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusionfrom Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schoolsnor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no breath of scandal touched his name.Born in London in 1812, he was educated largely by private tutors,and spent two years at London University, but the influence of hisfather, a man of wide reading and cultivated tastes, was probablythe most important element in his early training. He drew well,was something of a musician, and wrote verses from an early age,though it was the accidental reading of a volume of Shelleywhich first kindled his real inspiration. This indebtednessis beautifully acknowledged in his first published poem, "Pauline"(1833).

Apart from frequent visits to Italy, there is little of incidentto chronicle in Browning's life, with the one great exceptionof his more than fortunate marriage in 1846 to Elizabeth Barrett,the greatest of English poetesses.